


Alone, Together

by dragon_zena



Series: TMA/MP100 Crossover [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), モブサイコ100 | Mob Psycho 100
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda?, M/M, No ESP but obviously the entities exist, you don't really need to have a deep knowledge of TMA for this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25194196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragon_zena/pseuds/dragon_zena
Summary: "Serizawa is being watched.Maybe he’s just been locked in his room for far too long—just feeling the on-set consequences of years in isolation.But seeing as he has the ability to send both himself and other people to an empty wasteland of vapor and sea spray, circulating about his legs and rising along his torso like an old friend, Serizawa can’t really rule out the chance that yet another curse has been placed on him, in some capacity."TMA AU in which Serizawa is an avatar of The Lonely who ends up bumping into Reigen (quite literally) after a run-in with the Super Five.
Relationships: Reigen Arataka/Serizawa Katsuya
Series: TMA/MP100 Crossover [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825126
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	Alone, Together

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my first chapter fic, spawned from a need to talk about what the MP100 cast might be like in the universe of The Magnus Archives (MP100 fans that got me into TMA, this one is for you, legends). Most of this fic is mapped out, and this might be a series, but in case I never look at the AU ever again after finishing this fic, I made sure to write an ending that at least /Addresses/ plot holes (when I catch them).
> 
> I said it in the tags, but you don't need extensive knowledge of TMA lore to enjoy this fic! I explain TMA elements and entities enough to understand what's happening and how entities work, for the most part?
> 
> Content warnings are below this! I hope you all enjoy and stick with me through the rest of the fic!
> 
>  **CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER (If there is something I missed, please let me know!):**  
>  \- Body horror (Corruption variety, mold and plants growing on and along Minegishi's body; Shibata is the fucking hulk, as in canon; Touichirou is made of wax and his form gets melty)  
> \- Parasitic symbiosis (once again, on Minegishi's part; think cordyceps)  
> \- Depression/Suicidal Ideation & Thoughts

Serizawa is being watched.

He doesn’t leave his room often, if ever, is the thing. He is fine with being alone, because it keeps people _safe_. There is no room for error when it comes to his seclusion, and that’s why he knows immediately that something is so terribly _wrong_ , that his security, this self-imposed quarantine of cold mist in a windowless room, is being threatened. He feels it in the way that goosebumps prickle along his skin the moment he looks away from his screen, the way that it feels like the characters in his games have weight in their stares when they face him. It makes him want to chuck his remote through the television screen, but then he wonders whether that would stop the feeling of being scried on, and maybe...maybe he’s being paranoid. Maybe there’s nothing there, at all. Maybe he’s just been locked in his room for far too long—just feeling the on-set consequences of years in isolation.

But seeing as he has the ability to send both himself and other people to an empty wasteland of vapor and sea spray, circulating about his legs and rising along his torso like an old friend, Serizawa can’t really rule out the chance that yet another curse has been placed on him, in some capacity.

There’s not much that he can do about it, unfortunately, short of leaving this plane of existence entirely and spending longer and longer in a pocket dimension that leaves him numb, and unfeeling, and empty, which he always despises in retrospect.

Except, at one point, the feeling becomes unbearable, and he leaves in the middle of a playthrough of Super Mario Bros, which he has beaten at least fifty times. And when he comes back, something is happening to the game visuals, flickering and distorting on the screen. The music is skipping as though the disc is scratched (and it’s not—Serizawa takes very good care of these, at least). The speed of each note varies with each gap of space, and then Serizawa turns the television off. Because, seriously, what the hell.

It turns right back on. The sound is gone, and the silence is deafening.

Serizawa watches as the pixels dilate and transform into pictures that should not exist in the game, into photo-realistic landscapes and small maps in the corner of the screen. For a split second, he sees himself, in the moment. His dark hair is disheveled and greasy. His skin is sickly, and there are bags under bloodshot eyes. The image is gone almost as soon as it comes, but immediately, his eyes are shooting around his room for some sort of hidden camera, anything to make this make sense. There is nothing.

A soft beeping, not unlike the sound of a level being selected, redirects his attention back towards the television screen. A map of his home and the city in which it resides, as though taken from a bird’s eye view. There is a red arrow pointing at the forest that surrounds the nearby dog park.

“Is that where you want me to go? What do you want?” 

More insistent, and then the screen shorts out and goes black with a flash of electricity. His mother lets out a shout of surprise downstairs, and he can see that the lights have completely gone out inside of the house.

In his peripheral, he sees his screen blinking. Serizawa exhales, squeezes his eyes shut and gathers his courage before turning and reopening them. His breath immediately catches.

Eyes.

Hundreds of eyes drawn in white pixel, blinking at him at random intervals. Then they all shut as one, and the screen goes dark once more, leaving him in pitch black.

* * *

When Serizawa enters the previously depicted clearing of the forest, he immediately clocks that there are three people in front of him and two on either side of him.

The man in the center looks the most human. He has short, dark red hair, eccentric eyebrows and intimidating blue eyes, striking and bright despite their overwhelming placidity. Dressed in an expensive-looking black suit, well-worn, it would be easy to assume that maybe he was just a serious business major, or something, but. Even from where he’s standing, Serizawa can feel the heat rolling off of the man in waves.

To the left of the guy in the center is a slight person with light lavender hair, short and uneven, slack against their head. They look inconvenienced, as though their day has been interrupted for this, still wearing a gardener’s apron over what appears to be a white button-down shirt and black slacks—as such, they are the only one wearing a name tag, a scratched faux-bronze platelet with “Minegishi” printed on in a simple font. Minegishi’s face is pallid and sunken in, not as though they haven’t slept in a long while (although that is probably also the case), but as though something has sucked the life out of them. And, truly, that seems to be what happened, because as Serizawa glances over their form, he notices the sprawling grip of dodder vines along their arms, ascending around their neck with the prick of thorns and the buds of what look like morning glories along them. One of them pops into a flurry of pollen, and the skin in its vicinity rots. Minegishi simply twitches and scratches at the affected area, nonchalant. Their eyes are empty, and there is a mushroom pressing out of the side of their head, reminiscent of cordyceps.

There is a man hulking over Minegishi, muscles bulging and flesh rippling to an unsettling degree, unnaturally so, even if he were a bodybuilder. He is only wearing pants—blue jeans that have been ripped at the bottom of the legs. He is, frankly, highly uncomfortable to look at, even in comparison to Minegishi. 

Goosebumps prickle Serizawa’s skin, and he snaps his head at the familiar feeling of being parsed through like a leaflet. To his right is what looks like a normal guy, short with brown hair and square glasses. He isn’t even looking at Serizawa, at least not directly. He’s fiddling with an old Nintendo DS, tongue sticking out of his mouth. He seems just as bored as Minegishi, yet impatiently so. Serizawa thinks of his old gaming console back home, and itches to leave. The feeling of being watched intensifies to an almost overwhelming degree. Serizawa catches a flicker of a drone above him, and his lips curl into a small sneer before he smooths his expression and turns towards the last member of this group, who...has disappeared somewhere. Serizawa does not feel any safer with his lack of presence.

“Serizawa Katsuya,” the man in the center speaks, and Serizawa snaps his eyes over immediately, standing up taller. “27 years old. You haven’t left your room in quite some time.”

“15 years, according to your mom,” the guy to his right chirps, and Serizawa inhales sharply. The anxiety lends itself to anger pretty quickly. He knows his sins, but his mother has never done anything wrong, has never purposely hurt her son—or anyone, really. He feels a cold haze seeping out from the open spaces of his teeth, like dragon’s breath.

“Who are you?” He demands, clenching and unclenching his hands. Had any of them been regular people, he might have made a warning—but they were clearly like him, something either in their genes or maybe just similarly cursed, and whatever is wrong with them gives them an advantage over him, offensive abilities over his own affliction. “What do you want?”

“To help,” he says, and it drips with indifferent insincerity. “You don’t have a super great understanding of what's happening to you, do you? Even though you’ve dealt with it for so long.” 

And that piques Serizawa’s interest. He feels his right eyebrow twitch, just enough for them to know that he’s listening.

“It’s not about control,” the man starts. “Fifteen years is a long enough time to build up control for such a fickle domain, built just from your need to be alone. The Lonely, you’ve been feeding it well, but foolishly. You’re like a candle wick growing dangerously close to melted wax. Once your flickering life touches the wax, it will disappear, swallowed up and burned out."

“What does that have to do with you?” Serizawa grits out, baring his teeth and ignoring how welcoming the concept of burning out sounds. 

“You’re a strong avatar, yet you do nothing with your powers. I just think that having your assistance would be useful. You must understand, Serizawa, in the coming months, there will be no place for the weak on this Earth. Better to join the winning side now.”

And, well, this is not good, and he wants to get out of this situation. He needs to warn his mother, to tell her to take a small trip somewhere to avoid this, but...

There is a malignant aura at his back; the clear intent to kill, to use any means necessary. Serizawa realizes that the group surrounding him is Machiavellian in nature, that they want his submission to their mission above all else. Despite the fact that this man thinks he is being kind, Serizawa thinks that there is an almost certain chance that, should he try to turn him down or run, he’ll be murdered in cold blood.

Maybe in a different universe, this would go differently, the circumstances similar yet different. Perhaps, in that universe, that timeline, Serizawa would feel relief at the opportunity presenting itself to him—the chance to escape what is essentially a jail cell of his own creation, the ~~facade~~ possibility of growth, and learning, and experience.

But running is all that he knows right now, and his heart skyrockets at being cornered in a situation where there is seemingly no true choice. Serizawa doesn’t think that he is a bad person, despite whatever has landed him in this position. He does not want to be a bad person. And while these people are like him in some way, he does not wish to keep them as company.

If turning them down means his death, well. One less monster.

Serizawa takes a deep, shuddering breath, takes a step back and spits out a soft, “no thank you,” disappearing into the Lonely with only enough time to see how the man’s skin loses a bit of firmness in the heat that starts to erupt from his form.

Even in the solace of fog and mist, swirling along his feet, his heart thuds against the cage of his ribs. He steps back and back and back. Crouches with his head in his hands and between his knees and struggles to breathe. Lets the emotion and color run out of him in droves, lets the Lonely strip him clean.

And then he takes a deep breath and walks out, five hurried steps out of grey-scale.

Five steps right into one Reigen Arataka.

**Author's Note:**

> That's the prologue! Sorry that it was so short; the beginning is always the hardest part to write, for some reason. 
> 
> I hope that you all enjoyed the fic and stick with me! Unfortunately, updates with be irregular, but this _will_ be finished, and it will be finished before I go back to school, if my brain behaves.
> 
> Until then, feel free to buzz around my [twitter](https://twitter.com/Dragon_Zena) and [tumblr](https://www.dragon-zena.tumblr.com) pages! I'm more active on twitter than on tumblr, but I would love to discuss literally anything with you (especially if it has to do with any of my fandoms, or this AU specifically, etc. etc. etc.)!
> 
> Once again, thank you so much for reading and giving this a chance! See you until next chapter, when SeriRei start learning more about each other and falling in lOoOoOve!


End file.
